"This island will do very well for me," he thought; "if no traders
deal there, the mate will never come. And as for Kalamake, it is
not possible he can ever get as far as this."

With that he kept edging the schooner nearer in. He had to do this
quietly, for it was the trouble with these white men, and above all
with the mate, that you could never be sure of them; they would all
be sleeping sound, or else pretending, and if a sail shook, they
would jump to their feet and fall on you with a rope's end. So
Keola edged her up little by little, and kept all drawing. And
presently the land was close on board, and the sound of the sea on
the sides of it grew loud.

With that, the mate sat up suddenly upon the house.

"What are you doing?" he roars. "You'll have the ship ashore!"

And he made one bound for Keola, and Keola made another clean over
the rail and plump into the starry sea. When he came up again, the
schooner had payed off on her true course, and the mate stood by
the wheel himself, and Keola heard him cursing. The sea was smooth
under the lee of the island; it was warm besides, and Keola had his
sailor's knife, so he had no fear of sharks. A little way before
him the trees stopped; there was a break in the line of the land
like the mouth of a harbour; and the tide, which was then flowing,
took him up and carried him through. One minute he was without,
and the next within: had floated there in a wide shallow water,
bright with ten thousand stars, and all about him was the ring of
the land, with its string of palm trees. And he was amazed,
because this was a kind of island he had never heard of.

The time of Keola in that place was in two periods - the period
when he was alone, and the period when he was there with the tribe.
At first he sought everywhere and found no man; only some houses
standing in a hamlet, and the marks of fires. But the ashes of the
fires were cold and the rains had washed them away; and the winds
had blown, and some of the huts were overthrown. It was here he
took his dwelling, and he made a fire drill, and a shell hook, and
fished and cooked his fish, and climbed after green cocoanuts, the
juice of which he drank, for in all the isle there was no water.
The days were long to him, and the nights terrifying. He made a
lamp of cocoa-shell, and drew the oil of the ripe nuts, and made a
wick of fibre; and when evening came he closed up his hut, and lit
his lamp, and lay and trembled till morning. Many a time he
thought in his heart he would have been better in the bottom of the
sea, his bones rolling there with the others.

All this while he kept by the inside of the island, for the huts
were on the shore of the lagoon, and it was there the palms grew
best, and the lagoon itself abounded with good fish. And to the
outer slide he went once only, and he looked but the once at the
beach of the ocean, and came away shaking. For the look of it,
with its bright sand, and strewn shells, and strong sun and surf,
went sore against his inclination.

"It cannot be," he thought, "and yet it is very like. And how do I
know? These white men, although they pretend to know where they
are sailing, must take their chance like other people. So that
after all we may have sailed in a circle, and I may be quite near
to Molokai, and this may be the very beach where my father-in-law
gathers his dollars."

So after that he was prudent, and kept to the land side.

It was perhaps a month later, when the people of the place arrived
- the fill of six great boats. They were a fine race of men, and
spoke a tongue that sounded very different from the tongue of
Hawaii, but so many of the words were the same that it was not
difficult to understand. The men besides were very courteous, and
the women very towardly; and they made Keola welcome, and built him
a house, and gave him a wife; and what surprised him the most, he
was never sent to work with the young men.

And now Keola had three periods. First he had a period of being
very sad, and then he had a period when he was pretty merry.